


One Day

by mythbusterposey



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M, Modern AU, author is sorry, borderline triggering, not hurt/comfort at all, trigger warning: detailed descriptions of depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-28
Updated: 2016-02-28
Packaged: 2018-05-23 16:38:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6122725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mythbusterposey/pseuds/mythbusterposey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One day it's here and then it's gone, how can you keep holding on?</p><p>Rey is not herself, and Kylo is fighting to bring her back, and not lose himself in the process.</p><p>(Please heed the tags, this isn't happy)</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Day

**Author's Note:**

> As a preface, I live with depression and anxiety in my everyday life, and was feeling more than a little out of it. I managed to put these words down.
> 
> Inspiration/title come from One Day by Kodaline

It’s harder and harder to feel like Kylo wants her around. Too many times, she’s listened at the door to the bathroom and heard him crying. Guilt and shame rise up inside of her, unbearable yet all she feels. At night, she listens to the beat of his heart instead of sleeping, instead of dreaming. It’s only when she’s at work that the lights are bright enough for her to actually see her dark circles. She worries about him, constantly.

 

Someone congratulates her on the piece she did for the Mayor’s office one day. She hardly remembers it. It’s from a different time in her life. She mumbles this occurrence to Kylo at the dinner table, hoping he’d pick his head up from how he’s staring numbly at the plate he’s picking at. He’s had this consternated look on his face the last couple of days. It tells her he’s been thinking over some things, difficult things. She wonders with a sinking feeling if he’s debating on leaving her for good.

 

Most days it feels like he’s already started to leave, and she’s holding onto him by just a few hooks. It makes her feel sick, some days, to know he doesn’t want her in his life anymore.

 

She takes a few forks from a diner, to put in their kitchen drawers. She remembers when they were poor and had nothing but one another, and a few blankets on the floor. Then the parks service bought twelve pieces from her studio and they could go to the grocery store and eat until they were full for once. She’d cried all night, that night. He had, too. They were out of the darkness of hunger and being cold at night. That winter was their first with a heater, and a Christmas tree, and Christmas gifts.

 

The studio calls her and says she should take a day off. She hears the gentle pity in the voice on the other end of the phone and wants to die, on the spot. Kylo finds her curled into a ball on the fire escape, shivering from wearing nothing but sleep shorts and a tank top in the frigid November air. He’d yelled at her, she needed to take care of herself, fix this.

 

It wasn’t the numb expression on his lover’s face that brought him to apologize immediately after. It was the acceptance; she wouldn’t let him raise his voice to her and get away with it.

 

The rest of that night was silence. When he’d whispered to her, “I love you, Rey,” she’d just cried, too weak to say it back to him. He deserves so much better.

 

In a fit of rage, she took a blowtorch to everything she’d made the last three months in the studio. She watched the carefully twisted metals wilt and bend and collapse in on themselves, to become some ugly molten mess, unrecognizable and brittle. She doesn’t know who called Kylo, but he was there, taking the torch from her hands, taking her gloves off (and thank god she’d been wearing them) and holding her wrists in his hands, kissing her palms as she tried to jerk away from him, hit him, lash out, something, fight her way back to who she was. She’s screaming and sobbing and shaking, and by the time he’s gotten her in his arms again, it’s so silent she swears she hears his heart break in his chest.

 

She can feel the intervention coming before he asks to talk with her. She’s in some state of consciousness, dubious awareness notwithstanding. He pulls the chair out for her. He’s been so polite lately; the house has been quiet from how carefully he walks on eggshells.

 

“You need help, Rey.” he starts plainly, but his voice is wrecked like he’d been screaming and yelling and was at the end of his rope. His heart bleeds out his mouth as he continues. “I can’t keep up with whatever’s going through your mind, honey. You haven’t spoken to me in days, I have to remind you to do things, and it’s getting to the point where I feel like I’m going to have to hold your hand through it all. This isn’t...this isn’t you. I can remember the day where you were  _ you _ for the last time, so clearly in my head. Then it was...it.” he’s choking up, features pulling tight. “You were here one day, then you were gone, just a...a husk of you. I couldn’t...I can’t bear this. I don’t know you anymore. I’ve never seen you so critical of yourself to the point of you not even  _ making things _ . You’ve disassembled more pieces in the last month than you have since you started building. This isn’t art block, Rey. You need medical help for this, and I...I just want you back, so badly.” he’s crying now, face in his hands, shoulders shaking under the weight of what he’s told her. His sentences had been fragmented, almost, like he’d thought of every point individually over time.

 

“I’m sorry.” she whispers hoarsely, throat aching from the episode yesterday in the studio.

 

“I...I know of some doctors we can go see, I’ve been looking them up.” he mumbles.

 

And if that doesn’t feel like a punch to the gut, Rey’s never been in a fight. Which should frighten her; she’s been in too many fights to count, her entire life. She was right and she was wrong at the same time; he didn’t want her around and he did, somehow. She felt her skin crawl every time she attempted some form of introspection, not knowing who she was seeing in the mirror.

 

“How can you stand to even be with me?” she asks, voice dripping shame and disgust. He flinches a little with the vehemence in her words. “How are you still holding on? How do you...how do you know that other Rey isn’t dead and gone? How do you know this isn’t all you’re going to get? You can’t marry this.” she motions to herself. “I won’t let you marry me.” she shakes her head, and god, he’s crying again, but she can’t stop. “They’ll look at you and think you took advantage of some sad girl, desperate and lonely. You  _ cannot _ love me.”

 

Her conviction breaks him. He’s shuddering and sobbing, now, his will breaking as hers had weeks ago. Panic rises up in her chest like a sickness, and she’s on her feet by his side in a matter of moments. Her fingers push into his hair, greasy from days of not washing it, like hers was. His skin was pale beneath her hand on his cheek, pallor glowing sickly beneath the lights. His eyes were home to a mess of emotions, shadowed beneath by the darkest circles she’s ever seen on another person, outlining the stark red irritation of crying too much and too often. He didn’t even look like himself.

 

_ I’ve done this _ .

 

Her hands shake as she breaks into blubbering tears. “I’m so sorry.” she can’t even hear herself speaking, with the powerful emotions of regret and shame and guilt screaming in her ears. She hates him for the forgiveness she feels in his touch, as he pulls her into his lap.

 

It’s just something they have to live with, until there’s another day where everything could change.


End file.
